


The Pop Is Dead; Long Live The Superflat

by ezyl (gamblers)



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Les Djinns, M/M, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-19
Updated: 2010-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-07 06:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3165368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gamblers/pseuds/ezyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But if it burns, he's a pyromaniac.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>He makes a chart and lists her qualities and quantities. Worthlessly large amounts of figurative language, improper metaphors—<i>check</i>. Worthlessly large amounts of dark eyeliner and eye shadow—<i>check</i>. Worthlessly large amounts of pessimism and chaos theory—<i>check</i>. (If this were a standardized test, he'd be scoring two hundred percent without the deviation.)</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	The Pop Is Dead; Long Live The Superflat

**Author's Note:**

> written back in May 2010, archiving here because I encountered some nostalgia.

__  
Oh yeah, it's all right  
'Cause I got a pretty face  
I guess that I can sing all right  
Oh yeah, it's all right  
I can love you like a sailor  
I can make you dance all night

  
  
Something about the way she spoke, there was something about the way she spoke. Triggered the memories when she'd gotten a glimpse of the timid little bluebird in his palm, the thousand-legged millipede crawling languidly up his belly, when he'd mentioned –in-the-passing, of course– his dabbles in and out of the land of impressionist craft. Then she'd had to go ahead and play bad cop with him, picking apart ( _with her fingernails!_ ) the methods he'd chosen to handle his art—say, why don't you just fuck it all, plant your masterpieces in a few five-by-ten glass cases, turn on a couple thousand-watt spotlights, display them for the eyes of the world to fawn upon? Cease trapping those miserable clay owls under cold fingers and hot fists, releasing it in moments made of passion alone, less burn than frostbite? He makes a chart and lists her qualities and quantities. Worthlessly large amounts of figurative language, improper metaphors— _check_. Worthlessly large amounts of dark eyeliner and eye shadow— _check_. Worthlessly large amounts of pessimism and chaos theory— _check_. (If this were a standardized test, he'd be scoring two hundred percent without the deviation.) This girl; she's just like the crackpot ventriloquist he's supposed to be in mourning for, the crackpot ventriloquist he maybe kind of misses, whose position had been relinquished too easily, and definitely to the wrong guy in the mask. Made him so angry he could shit clay, and yeahwouldn't Tobi have had a field day with that one.

So he'd responded in like, some fabulous narration with a load of extraneous syllables—can't really recall it now, but he's assuming he was very proud of it at the time. (He always assumes.) He had preached to her about Art for Art's Sake,  _la vie en Deidara._  Morals he had stood for, once a million years ago. She'd laughed, after, less bemusement than an unnecessary bit of self-righteous mocking (she's rarely entertained, and this wasn't the first time he's realised it); her laugh is kind of bright and dull at the same time, giggles and jokes cracked like egg shells over crumpled paper. The pitch that climbed out from the top of her throat was marvelous; the fragile end of harmonic, standing waves in a closed-end organ pipe vibrating at a frequency slightly above three hundred thirty meters per second. Voice of a thousand decibels. She could probably render him deaf when he's post-coital, if she'd really bothered to try. And he can hear it now, too, like he could hear it the first time—inflections bright, _too_  bright to have gone by unnoticed. Lilt in the accent that watermarked  _Iwagakure_  into her mother's roots. She shares the same speech pattern as his jounin advisor—same tip-toes around the harsher expletives, same drops of the conventional patterns for illogical ones. Same laugh, same laugh, same laugh. Hers was a voice that could raise zombies from the dead. (He'll bet on his best C-4 that Hidan tried to have a fuck with her, too, before they handed her over to Deidara.)

But it was really  _her speech_  that brought him back, way back.

Way back the time he'd been anal and latent, days when no tragedies existed and fairy tales domineered over common sense.

Way back to the time he'd still been oral, sucking on clay nubs and dangling his fat baby toes over the edge of the crib while he watches mother's hands working the potter's wheel. It's less artwork than a sad attempt to pay the bills and keep her family alive. Kaa-chan's fingers were considered the classic beauty in Earth Country—strong and springy, muscles supple along the tendons, skin swaddled brown from the noonday laundry and midmorning kilns. They mold, they fold, they carve, they crawl, they dip, she spits. Gives the clay some volume. And this is too much for Deidara. It's too exciting; too much explosive beauty in a space too-cramped, smelling of too much sweat, too many tears. The mouth in his palm clamps down on his flesh in a burst of elation, he screams when he sees his own blood, mother looks up, wheel slows to a stop. And then he's chewing one of the clay nubs, and then kaa-chan's reaching over, forming seals with her supple fingers, the clay slips from her hands,  _I should've know better than t—_ BOOMBOOMBOOM, mother's gone, her beautiful hands are gone, her beautiful artwork gone; the cracked mouth on her chest remains, smiling a sickly smile, sewed shut by the seams. It had been his mother's secret for a quarter of a century, now it would be his to keep forever.

Motherly affection, chakra-infused clay, Deidara's first and last memory of family life.

"Yeah, you're not from around here. You grew up in Iwagakure."

She tilts her head to one side, bare breasts roll over to the left, exposes a quirky blue-eyed tattoo on her belly for the eyes of the world to fawn upon (indeed!). "What, you got some beef against Iwa?"

Aw, hell. If Deidara had beef, he'd eaten it up a long time ago. No shit. Actually, if Deidara still had any trace of beef left, he'd probably have gotten around to blowing it up into smithereens before he swallowed any of it. She flashes him a smug grin. God, why couldn't anyone find a _soft_ -spoken prostitute somewhere around here—though on second thought, Hidan or Kisame would have made any necessary dispatches to make absolute sure of there being a complete  _lack_  of soft-spoken girls. But if only she didn't have to sound so much like Sasori no danna. If only she could mind her own business and suck his cock like a regular whore. If only she didn't laugh that stupid laugh that shuffled his mind back to Earth Country. (If only Tobi would stop being such a passive-aggressive asshole. If only they'd all stop confusing his art with mainstream. If only Uchiha Itachi would admit to being more feminine than Deidara and  _move on_. If only, if only, if only.)

Deidara had pranced into town wearing a crucifix, even commanded the cat to stay in the hotel, but God, somehow he's  _still_  managed to fuck his partner over, have half of a bump-in with a team of irritating ignoramuses from Konoha and get  _horny_ , on top of all that.

"Iwa was pitted heaven, that's what I thought," she says lazily, stretches her arms until they bang against the headboard of the motel bed, "I thought, until it turned into living hell under a pile of rocks."

Oh, wouldn't he like to agree. He could give a big toast to them all. To the days when everything had possessed thick, dusty layers of timelessness to it, to the ninjutsu learned and remembered and thought innocuous (was there anything truly harmless in this world?). To when art was still art and there was no clear distinction between pop and super flat, to when  _his_  art was still art and no one threw hissy fits when he modeled women in the nude. To Kurotsu and her veinless thinking and lightning-fast clay birds, to Aka's giant bed of sediment that he'd smash open at five in morning, every morning. To Tsuchikage-sama, whose language always seemed more politically-incorrect than his actions. To them all.

Damn them all.

(Once in a while, Deidara has to remind himself that he doesn't miss his home.)

But maybe no one from Iwa can recognize him any more, not with two mangled arms and a fucked-up eye. The thought makes him a little worried for the bounty hunters he'd wanted to decapitate.

"What's your name?"

"Monika. Kanzaki Monika. That's not my real name, of course."

"Hm."

>>

But maybe that's what drew him to her; it was that extra bit of marble and granite in her bloodstream, the Iwa that smelled as strong and appealing to him as fresh earth after lightning rain. Clay that could be molded in his hands, shifted and suppressed, palpable and flexible. Nothing in the world could compare to it, the thrill he could feel and smell and experience when the clay dissolved into a dream, right into the collective unconscious the rest of the world had once known as art.

_< <_

"Stop leering at Itachi that way, Deidara," Kisame tells him from on top of the ring finger, "You know he'll just kill you if you try."

"Oh, go and choke on your stupid phallic sword, why don't you," Deidara snaps.

"Yeah, if you ask me, I'd say it's the sexual tension," Tobi says.

"No one asked," Konan says flatly.

"It's okay. Me and Kisame will find you a nice whore to play around with after we finish sealing this one," Hidan tells Deidara.

"Ooh, senpai's growin' up!" Tobi sniggers.

"…find one with really big tits and everything…"

"Pneumatic?"

" _Fuck yes, pneumatic."_

"We've been doing this for two days and two nights and I really have to take a piss. All of you shut up before I dismember somebody," Kakuzu growls.

"Piss? Can't you like, photosynthesize or something?"

"He's not Zetsu."

"Besides, there's no sunshine over here and it's been raining all day. It always gets like this after we kill someone from Konoha."

"Oh my god, that is  _so_  true."

"I'm not surprised they can control the weather, too."

Itachi coughs. (A clear indication to all of them that they cannot possibly have been more incorrect.)

"I should get Samehada to test it out…"

" _I'll kill all of you._ "

"…"

"…"

"Well. I hope you have fun with your piece of ass, shark boy."

( _"Isn't the Akatsuki the coolest thing ever, Deidara-senpai?" Tobi says._ )

_< <_

And so he's grown to kind of like this life, wandering around, turning over waterfalls and trees, blasting open a pathway when he couldn't find one for himself. Kurotsu had called it Deidara-nii's special ability, written novels and research papers and love letters in her diaries and molded clay centipede after centipede in hopes of catching up to him. Aka looked up to him for it, too, found ways to help him blast open even more rules and doctrines and societal codes (set the whole council on their ass with those volcanic eruptions, once; it made each of them extremely proud of the other, Deidara for the level of the explosion, Akatsuchi for the smile on Deidara's face). Even Tsuchikage-sama had given it his acknowledgment, awarded him a grand prize at the Fifty-Second Annual Arts Competition for it. The old man had hoped to dash Deidara's burning desire, this search for a solution that had no solution save for one that alluded to Ultimate Death and End of the World. A waste. The Tsuchikage had been aware of it the moment he'd seen Deidara's hands. Too much, too late. It was Deidara's own mother who had sealed the pearly teeth on her baby's hands, traded rose-red skin for rose-red lips, tactility for tongue. The boy had been written off as a terrorist practically overnight. End of the world had come before anyone had realised a possibility for prevention thereof.

_> >_

"Deidara. You are not under any obligation to hide anything."

"Yeah, well. You're a dick."

" _I'm_  certainly not the one looking like I want to molest whatever's alive and standing in front of me in the next ten seconds."

"Shit, Uchiha, I didn't know you could be dirty-minded."

"…You're not going to apologize for that, are you?"

"No. You suck."

"Was that a Freudian slip?"

_> >_

"You know what would've made you a billion times sexier?"

"What, hm?"

"If you'd been a pyro instead. Fire's all the rage these days. I heard some dope head just burned down that place in Rain Country two weeks ago, and now you can see the smoke for miles around. And you know, I really want to do it with a pyromaniac."

"Could've said that earlier," he swallows dry-mouthed, "Like,  _before_  I became a terrorist bomber and all, y'know?"

"No, really! Imagine having fire in your semen."

"That's really kind of disgusting."

"Sexy."

Masochist. "I'm sure sorry I'm not sexy enough for you."

"You poor bastard," she smiles, smoothes a hand through his hair. Fuck, even her hands look like his mother's.

"I am a very poor bastard. In fact, I am so impoverished that it is very likely I won't be able to pay to have sex with you again."

The words sink in.

She doesn't let him down, twirls a strand of his hair around her fingers, tugs down until he's wincing. "Is that so?"

"Sorry to disappoint you again."

Laughs, twirls, tugs. "I'm not disappointed, Dei. Anyway, if it's just fucking you're looking for, I  _do_ know a few switches and some girls who ride cheaper than me. Not that I'd recommend any of them, mind you; except maybe Toru, but if you hurt him I'll be planning your murder. And with those chicks, you probably have to start taking over-the-counter chlamydia seriously." Chuckles. (And she's always been good at taking things easily inside herself, he marvels. Probably made her what she is, in this day and time.)

His smile twists. "Admit it, you'll miss me."

She doesn't reply for a while, scoots over to the other side of the bed and starts hunting for her thong. "I will not. You have a really lousy sex drive. A nice voice, sure, but I'm not looking for audio porn."

"Me neither."

The girl scratches her leg. "You know what? Fine, then. I'll see you one more time next month. Free service. I owed Kakuzu one, anyway."

<<

What's more interesting is that he knows it, and she knows that he knows it.

Now he's crossed the border between Water and Fire, having just carried-out an impromptu matinee show that had left the daimyo and his first lady permanently-scarred and all-too-willing to conspire with the League of Falcons. He'd used a couple of his personal concoctions—igneous base, uranium powder, liquid sulfur. This job had paid for the comfortable leather belt around his waist, three extra bags of TNT, and a solid stick of silver in his pocket. He'd never paid too much interest to politics, no left-wing extremism whatevers for him. Just break-in, plant the bombs, detonate, get out. Some of his underground connections billed him off as Iwagakure's very own Momochi Zabuza, but he'd have to disagree—Zabuza never left his crime scenes with a bang. It was what made the artist different from an assassin.

The little white bird flutters to a stop on his index finger, runs a gilded beak through her primaries. Report of a branch snapping approximately fifteen-hundred-seventy meters, sixty-seven degrees bearing west. He kind of wants to sigh in exasperation, but it's a little out of character, so he doesn't.

She has been tracking him down for two days, now, kipping under trees and caves and keeping to a sixteen-hundred meter radius that she knows he can't breach unless he uses C-4, one eye focused what he's doing and another eye on the people who might interrupt their conversation. She's always been a good tracker and defense type, but he's always been better than her. Now it's quiet. The world is silent and lonely and he sees her coming. Her whisper comes in a wind that rattles his bones. It affects him more than it should.

"Deidara-nii."

"Kurotsuchi, isn't it."

She doesn't wait for him to respond, walks forward like she understands what he's thinking, that he might not kill her at any moment. Always the innocent little Kurotsu, always the double standards. He's not her Deidara-nii, not anymore, she's simultaneously aware of it while she approaches him; she's a jounin and Iwagakure ANBU, everything that both of them had once fallen asleep dreaming about. But he knows what she wants from him, knows it just like he knows that he'll never be able to hand it to her without putting up a fight that will kill them both, fuck this world and its systematic rules and systematic misfortunes. Everything has to march counterclockwise on its own difficult complex in order to work. The sergeant is jealous of the guard just as the guard is jealous of the sergeant. Vicious cycle bites itself in the ass. Hears the grasshopper, voices that hurl and rain tears. This is what he hates. This is what he'll die fighting against. (This is pop art.)

"You can't kill me, so just don't try."

"So now I can't even greet an old friend?"

"Kurotsu. Stay away."

"Deidara-n—"

" _I'll kill you."_

This is a world.

_> >_

But if it  _had_  been audio porn, it would have probably sounded something like this.

"…"

"Fuck."

"…"

" _Oh, fuck._ "

"Shit…you're still so tight…should've made you suck me off first."

"Oh, fuck you."

"That's exactly what I'm doing. Hm."

"Really,  _fuck y_ —oh. Oh,  _oh. Yes._ "

"…"

"Oh…fuck…fuck…Deidara…oh,  _god_ …yesyesyes,  _right there_ …OH FUCK YES."

"…"

" _Fuck_."

"…"

"…"

"…Fuck."

"Yeah, fuck."

"That was a good fuck. Hm."

"It was a  _top-class_ fuck, you twat."

"What, you supposed to be a top-class whore or something?"

"Go suck a dick."

"You know, that's really not a threat a prostitute should use. I'm thirsty."

"Go outside, then. I have a man coming in ten. Jesus, I  _knew_  I shouldn't have let you in."

"See you later, then. Thanks for the sex."

"Don't thank me. Sex you paid for, isn't it?"

"Kakuzu paid for it, actually."

"Well. In that case, sure, Kakuzu's very welcome. Why don't you tell him to send along some more lubed condoms for the next time you take somebody up the ass?"

"…bitch. You were the one clinging to me like an Antigone."

"Smart-mouthed dick, aren't you. Tell Matisse I said hi."

<<

Deidara had once played a game with Kurotsuchi. It involved molding a piece of everyday life –a bird, an flower, a cloud– out of academy-grade metamorphosis clay between the palms of your hands without ever glancing at it, and then taking turns guessing what the other person had tried to make. If Deidara guessed correctly, Kurotsu would open her hands and then both of them would scrutinize the little brown blob of earth on her palm, see if it matches what she'd intended for it to be. It was a difficult game to work with, at first. You had to be sure you knew exactly what you were going to make, envision it in your mind like a picture in a book and remind yourself not to accidentally compile any last-minute details that you didn't plan beforehand. Positive imaging and meticulous strategy rolled into a child's game of clay figurines. To the prodigiously-gifted and sticky-fingered Deidara, barely past his sixth birthday and recently-graduated as genin, victory came as a sweet surprise. It had taken barely three months of continuous competitions and show-downs in the streets of Iwagakure until Kurotsu took to squatting down on the ground, small arms crossed and eyes screwed up in the sun, accusing Deidara-nii of being a big fat cheater.

But he gives credit to Kurotsuchi for it, all those months of practice. It was how he'd gotten good at blasting life off its hinges and never having to look back to check if it was a clean break.

_> >_

"What's a better way to die, getting tied-up with a leather belt and strangled during anal sex, or getting shoved inside a potato sack with a bunch of rocks and then thrown into a river?"

"Why are you asking me this?"

"Oh, nothing. Some rumors going around Toru's circle, is all. He tells me that there have been a few disappearances. Serial killer wandering around targeting the prostitutes in the neighbour district."

He sits up on his elbows. Brushes her hair away from her forehead and suddenly recalls childhood drama and molding little clay spiders that crawled up and down the water tank, taking turns hiding behind the curtains in Tsuchikage-sama's office, gazing at stars in the middle of a box canyon. Recalls the best friends he's ever lost, skipping stones on mud, showdowns on the streets of Iwa, remembers and strokes her hair behind her ears with his fingers.

"Hey. You know something else that would've made you a lot sexier?"

"What."

"If you'd been a carpenter instead."

"Wouldn't doing it with a carpenter give you a lot of splinters or something?"

"Way to spoil the mood. I wasn't thinking about sex."

"I wasn't either. And here's something interesting for you."

_< <_

A mind-block trick?

_A mind-block trick._

Why would I ever need that?

_Gosh, Deidara-nii, will you just shut up and try it?_

Kurotsuchi presses her palms lightly against his forehead, and he feels a bit of warmth trickle onto his skin from her fingertips. Fingers form a hand-seal that doesn't really look like a seal, mutters words that he can't hear from over here.  _There, all done. Do you feel it, Deidara-nii? Now you can say anything you want and nobody will call you out on it, absolutely nobody. Try it, try it!_ Takes her hands away from his hitai-ate, stares into his eyes like she's looking for a spark of recognition from a lost kitty; he blinks tiredly, looks into her pupils—they're  _sparkling_.

Okay. I am actually an extraterrestrial. I was born on a planet made of instant ramen.

_Don't tell me_  obvious  _things like that! Something else!_

(Should he be insulted?)

…She says she learned it from that boy from the Kamenishi clan, the one who had that really embarrassing crush on her when they were still genin. Says the trick worked really well during the chuunin exam, when some creepy old guys from Kumogakure ganged up on her in a subterranean cave. Says that she'd bet her life on it, now. Says a lot more things, some of it just a load of horseshit and some of it vaguely disturbing. Says stuff that makes him uncomfortable, makes things awkward, makes him believe that he'll really have to leave her behind, one of these days.

"He told me that…that they say you're supposed to use it to protect the people you love."

_> >_

The box is a little worn around the corners. Solid mahogany, heavy and musky odor inside, but sturdy in the metal hinges and classy-looking, in a rustic sort of way. She could hang jewelry on the underside of the lid, hoop earrings or the mesh chain she always wears around her left ankle. He can imagine her fingers unlatching the clasp open in the morning, taking out jewelry and holding it up against her face in front of the mirror. Gems glittering in the lazy autumn sun. He'll have to get her something amber to match the color of her eyes—maybe something emerald, too, for that pretty cocktail dress she'd unzipped the first time he was introduced to her.

The lid of the box is a little discolored. Damn it, she'll notice right away and probably start calling him names. He takes out a kunai from underneath his belt and slides the sharper end of the blade across the smooth wood, screws up his eyes and tries to conjure up the most complicated and aesthetically appealing pattern he can think of, decides on a twisty-vine thing and a few sunflowers. Hey, maybe carpentry wouldn't be such a bad occupation, after all. Scratching out a few lopsided sunflower petals, he thinks it's his ugliest piece of art, yet. In place of his penniless pocket, for want of a prostitute who never looks him in the eye. In place of his actions, for want of a heart.

But what does he know? Maybe she'll like it.

_> >_

"Thanks for the box. It looks good on my dresser."

"I thought you'd gotten eaten up by Zetsu or something."

She thumbs a cigarette. He holds the lighter for her, flicks the catch with a click. She cups a palm over the flame to shield it from the wind, lights up, inhales, exhales.

Inhales, exhales.

"I was interrogated," she says after a while. Her voice is fresh starch. Shit, now he can see the traces of blood on her lips from under the thick coat of lipstick, hasty patch of foundation covering a yellowing bruise over her left eyebrow, garish purple tint to her eye shadow. "Some hunter-nin from Suna or whatever. They tried to wipe my mind, too, but I had that mind-block trick you taught me."

It was a shame, he thinks suddenly, a big shame he'd have to kill her.

"You didn't—"

"Hey, if you so much as  _think_  I ratted you out, then you're really fucking retarded."

Inhales, exhales.

Her lipstick smudges against the smooth end of her cigarette. It makes him want to smoke one, too; it looks too potentially-addicting from this angle (the cigarette, definitely the cigarette, definitely the cigarette and not her mouth). "I do appreciate you, Deidara. You made me feel like a real woman, you know? Something my husband never figured out. Thanks for that. Honestly."

He doesn't really know what to say. Oh wow, you're married? There's so much he doesn't know about her. A lot of it he'll never figure out.

(Inhales, exhales.)

"Hey, Dei?"

"Yeah?"

"Wanna know a secret?"

"Hm?"

"I knew you."

"What?"

"I knew you, once. A long time ago." (I knew you once upon a long time ago.)

"The hell's that supposed to mean?"

Exhales. Forget it. "Can you stay tonight? Until morning?"

"I can't stay."

"Oh, okay."

"Mm."

"That's fine. So. I guess I'll—"

"Wait," he says suddenly, fingers scramble for the bag around his waist, sticks a hand inside, waits for teeth to open and close. Strings this last little gift of his around her neck. Presses into her lips the first kiss he's never had.

"Whoa." She pulls away, clears her throat. "I-I'll see you around?"

"Yeah, see you around."

And the only regret he has is that he'll never get to hear her voice, ever again. He's bullshitting his own romantics.

Minus five from detonation.

His fingers are shaking.

* * *

(And so he figures that he may have loved her, both Kanzaki and Kurotsuchi, at some point or the other. Not now.)

* * *

Until Uchiha Itachi does this little blink of an eyelash thing that makes him look even more ridiculously attractive (fuck-able), asks Deidara, "What made you join the Akatsuki?"

"Other than you and Sasori no danna and shark boy dragging me halfway across the country on my ass? Oh, on a whim, I suppose," he says, then screws his mouth shut with a glare.

_> >_

Kisame is less sympathetic.

"Did you blow up the whore?"

He closes his eyes.

"Deidara, is she dead?"

"…yeah. Yeah, I killed her."

_> >>_

The prostitute who hangs her laundry from the balcony behind the business district gets up at the crack of dawn each morning, when the skies are still a little bit purple and worn down from the dregs of the dusty night, when the birds are not quite in tune yet and the world is still a frame extracted from a film about impressionist craft. The men and women who play customers to her service are not allowed to sleep in her bed past dawn; it's a personal rule that she's kept and broken only once in her life—façade and illusion simply in place to make sure that, when she's waking up to this time of new beginnings, springtime of day, she can find the sheets empty, breathe the atmosphere without reading it, and trick herself into believing that she's still living a no-regret life. It works for exactly five seconds from the time she opens her eyes; another five seconds to taste the flavor of life. She showers with a plastic hose duck-taped to the bathroom door, throws on comfy bras and cotton panties for the morning, unhooks hoop earrings from a little wooden box with flowers carved on the lid. Spends about an hour in front of the bathroom mirror applying worthlessly large amounts of dark eyeliner and eye shadow, emerges beautiful and radiant like a shiny coin that someone lucky may pick up from the sidewalk. She isn't kunoichi, isn't really magical; the only thing she's got going for her is appearing once in a while as a sex object in the fantasies of one of her customers. She's your regular pretty lady, scarlet-lettered and battered by time, bits of schizophrenic societal castaway mixed dry with some sort of disillusionment about the meaning of life.

And yet.

And yet she's got something special, all to herself.

The old man Tanaka who lives next door on top of the garden center is the only one who talks to her in the mornings. She takes walks out the back door, and sometimes they walk together. He's too old for sex, and she's had too much to worry about the consequences, so they talk and talk and talk. Gossip, debate, conspiracy theories, heated arguments, anything that brings the sun over the horizon a little quicker. This morning, he's finally set his sights on the necklace that she's been wearing for every day of her life.

"Why do you hang that miserable clay owl thing around your neck, anyway? It doesn't match your street attire at all, to tell the truth."

"Oh, this?" She touches the clay, feels a tingle of chakra long-gone brush against her collar bones. She wonders when it'll detonate, and wonders how much of the artist she could feel once it does. "Just a memoir. A friend of mine gave it to me. Haven't seen him in five years, now."

"Wow. Must've been a pretty dumb guy to abandon someone like you. One of those pop artist freaks, I'll take it?"

Her smile is bright. "Nope. His style is definitely superflat."


End file.
